Official Selection Santa Barbara International Film Festival
Screening: Friday, January 28th, 10 pm at the Lobero Theatre

Published on Apr 23, 2012

THE SYNOPSIS

Maggie is struggling. Living in Los Angeles has made her feel increasingly isolated and apprehensive, and her strained relationship with her husband Ben is offering little solace.

She hopes that a camping trip with her friend Alex and her successful husband Kyle will offer an opportunity to relax. She couldn’t be more wrong.

After meeting a stranger in the woods, Maggie is soon confronted with a situation that she can’t quite grasp. She comes face to face with the dark side of some people in a very desperate place and ultimately is forced to make decisions that will decide whether or not she survives.

All Alone is an intense, character-driven suspense that examines trust, relationships, desperation, sex and asks the question, ‘how alone are we?’

Caucasian, female, 33. Struggling photographer, runner and vegetarian. Married to Ben for seven years and currently overwhelmed by the stresses of living in Los Angeles.

Odds of survival: 12 to 1

Ben Cavett

Caucasian, male, 32.
High school English teacher who makes ends meet by teaching adult classes on weekends and hopes to someday teach at the university level. An intellectual, Ben’s married to Maggie but struggling to connect emotionally to her.

Odds of survival: 4 to 1

Alex Manning

Caucasian, female, 35. Trying to figure out what she wants to do with her life and taking Ben’s writing class on weekends. Married to Kyle for ten years and very comfortable with the lifestyle that marriage affords her. Now, roughing it for her is no room service.

Odds of survival:10 to 1

Kyle Manning

Caucasian, male, 38.
Very successful financial advisor and stockbroker. Knows how to succeed, except maybe with his marriage to Alex. Brutally honest. Appreciates a good bottle of wine and a fine automobile.

Odds of survival: 3 to 1

Stranger

Caucasian, female, 25. Spends long periods of time camping and hiking in the woods. No tent.
Actual occupation: unknown.
Sexual orientation: unknown.

Reviews

All alone doesn't offer a thing
2 October 2012 |
4.3/10 · IMDb
All Alone isn't a original story. But that doesn't mean that it can't be a good flick. The story is simple, two couples are going for a camping in the woods but not without a reason. There's an affair going on between the couples and the hike is ideal to kill the partners. Look promising even as a thriller. Sadly it wasn't what it could have been.

As a horror it didn't deliver a thing. Here in our regions it is qualified under horror but again, it doesn't do what it could have done. There's no blood to mention and all bad things are done off-camera. Okay, so it can be a thriller, but even there it just doesn't offer.

Every time you think that things will go awry it just doesn't. Even the witness of one of the killings is being hunted by the killer but it is so low on all things that should have made it a thriller or a horror that you are left with a bitter feeling.

It's one of those flicks that you watch with your teens on a rainy Saturday afternoon. Or as a friend of my did, one evening after a brutal day dealing with a client who needed help with their custom software development by rtslabs.com, but couldn't make up his mind what exactly he wanted. The client's off-the-shelf (OTS) software wasn't robust enough for his business's needs nor was it compatible with some of his other software. He was frustrated and took that frustation out on myfriend. My friend came home that night with some take out food from the corner Thai place, popped in a CD of All Alone I had loaned him, grabbed a beer or two and settled in to chill out. His comments to me later that week was he had the impression that “All Alone” was a fancy vanity project of some rich person that could’ve been worse, but is hardly worth seeing. Sure it had its moments, but as a thriller it is pretty anemic. He thought the ending was ludicrous and coming on the heels of a couple of plot-twist, it seemed pretty expected and unsurprising. It did not really improve his day, but what the heck.

This is one of those flicks that even the easy offended can watch all alone.

All Alone ( Jon Cellini, 2010): USA

Reviewed by Rhys Davis.

Viewed at the Lobero Theater, SBIFF 2011.

One of the semi-disappointing moments in this year’s Santa Barbara Film Festival came when I decided to see All Alone directed by Jon Cellini. Before I get started I will say that this film did have some positives and delivered some suspenseful, and comedic moments, but overall I was not a fan in the end . All Alonetakes place in Los Angeles with two couples who decide get out of the city and take a camping trip to get away from all the chaos of the city, and the mounting stress on their relationships. As the story develops we find out that not all is what it seems, and that there are ill intentions between two of the characters.

Maggie (Mandy Levin), the main character, who is alone inside, and is very insecure with herself. Her husband Ben (Brice Williams) is a school teacher who is tired of his boring life and living with his wife. The two quarrel about bills because Maggie forgot to deposit Ben’s check on time, and Maggie is upset with Ben because he shows no emotion to her. The other couple consists of Alex (Suzy Cote) and Kyle (David Jones), who also have their own argumentative scene in the beginning of the film. Together these beginning scenes immediately put me off. The lack of camera angles and editing made it feel more like a stage play than a motion picture. The set design, the lack of camera angles and editing, and no convincing acting really threw me off in Alex and Kyle’s scene.

Then we get to the real interesting part. Maggie invites Alex and Kyle over for dinner one night. At dinner the two couples decide that there relationships are strained, work has its mounting pressures, and the city can be constricting, so they go camping for the weekend to get away from it all. When the two couples arrive at the camping site we learn that Ben and Kyle have been having an affair with each other, and that Ben has developed a sinister plan to dispose of his wife Maggie and Kyle’s husband Ben. Plans go all wrong when a hippie, nomadic, vegan girl is camping by their site. Ben and Alex panic because now there is a witness nearby and there plan is exposable.

Maggie and the new girl Birch bond at the campsite, while Ben and Kyle go hiking up the steep mountain pass. It looks as if Maggie may have found a true friend, but Alex blames Birch of stealing money out of her wallet so that Birch will leave, and the plan may go according as planned. Birch leaves in anger of being blamed, and while she is walking along the path she witnesses Ben push Kyle off a cliff where he falls to his death. Birch runs back to warn Maggie but Ben is running back to the campsite as well. When Ben finds out that Birch witnessed what he did you can imagine what happens in the last twenty minutes.

As i said before there were some funny parts and some thrilling scenes but overall i didn’t appreciate it. The climax in the end is tasteless, and could have been much better than a classless seduction. I understand that there budget was very small, but what they put together could have been much better